Reaching Capacity
by XX-Samantha-XX
Summary: Is feeling nothing better than something; better than pain, better than anger, better than hate? Is not reacting better or worse? AU depending on how you look at it. Post 'Obsession'


_Disclaimer: Don't own the characters._

_Something random that I started before the episode 'Obsession' but decided that it fit in perfectly with it and slightly with the one I called 'Doing nothing and Letting go' _

_**Spoilers- Maybe a few, references to previous seasons and the new episode 'Obsession'. One Shot **_

**Reaching Capacity**

Is feeling nothing better than something; better than pain, better than anger, better than hate? Is not reacting better or worse?

How many more until you don't feel anything at all?

Until it doesn't hollow out your insides, until it doesn't make your blood run ice cold with sadness or burning hot with the anger that you couldn't have stopped any of it from happening.

That you were idiotic enough to make all those mistakes in the first place.

That you didn't know that what you had done would stop working and leave you a soul stripped shell that nobody, not even you, could recognise anymore.

I mean sure, you know it's been coming for a long while. It can't _not_ come in your line of work; everyone says it.

Giving up.

Burnout.

Call it what you will but it will come, after all it was inevitable from the get go. _Wasn't it?_

There becomes a point where you just stop. Stop caring, stop reacting. Where the carefully constructed box you created when you were young cracks and leaks, blurring actual reality with yours; such that can't tell the difference so you just detach because it's easier.

_Safer._

But then, you were and have been far more cynical of life than you should have been, even from a young age.

First it was your mom. You were only eight but it didn't mean you didn't notice that she wasn't there anymore nor miss her any less. You may not have understood why she was gone but you knew not to ask anyone why she'd gone away, especially your father. _That_ would only get you in big trouble.

Then you were twelve, disowned and sent to the loneliness that was boarding school. Plastering a smile upon your face. You noticed that you got attention so the face became a mask and was developed into a disguise; hiding away anything painful or anything others didn't need to know. Pushing all the bad into a box and creating your own world.

College was the best time of your life but also the worst. For a Phys Ed major to lose a shot at going pro. Well, frankly that was just infuriating. To have the dream so close but only to have it taken away by a man named Brad Pitt who would become a friend to you later. This also got shoved into the box and forgotten when you wanted to help people instead. Help them to find what you never got, whether by saving them or at least bringing justice for their families.

Three separate police forces, all lasting no longer than two years. Not exactly something prospective employers were looking for. However, on one, maybe two of the occasions you were being forced out anyway so decided to leave before you were kicked. The other, well, that was purely your own fault and you know it, you made it impossible to go back there on purpose; burning all the bridges to dust as you left. Even though you knew if you carried on like you had, you would be forcing all the remaining space out of the box with the memories and actions that didn't conform to your new world; becoming detached with reality.

Now, you've been here longer than the others put together but you've been questioning yourself for a long time on whether it was truly worth it. You gained the most here which left you with the most to lose as well. You connected and didn't find the use for the box anymore, it was getting smaller, it wasn't necessary anymore.

But everything changed about four years into this new start where your disguise hadn't been needed. But the new you had been ripped away in a single poly-coated bullet and crimson blood that even to this day you could still feel clinging to your skin. This time you could have had a family and you gave it up; even if that chance had been based on a created lie from the higher ups. You wouldn't have needed to have pushed that away into the recesses of your mind; filling the box beyond its capacity.

You wouldn't be here now, and wouldn't have lost more of the tenuous hold you held on to life with. They wouldn't have witnessed you at your worse. Where you only focused on one thing, where you became obsessed with what you thought was the right thing to do. Breaking the rules that bound you to the only real father figure you'd ever had.

You tried kid yourself into thinking that one last push would fix it all, would give you your motivation back. Would help you release the pressure inside your fragile box. But, it only sent you the opposite way when you found that she'd lied to you all along and you'd been chasing after something that was already deteriorating as time grew longer.

But maybe, it was deserved. Maybe it had happened to show you that you weren't okay anymore. That you couldn't continue the way you were. Maybe, it had been a warning of things to come. Bad, unknown things that would shake the very foundation that you had created here. That had been created with this new family you had grown to love and hate all at the same time.

Maybe you wouldn't be here now, down in your boss' basement. Saying that you weren't okay. Maybe, it was teaching you a lesson that you should have learnt years ago, that you should have left when you had been given that one chance to have a blood family all your own. To start afresh, without the lies, or need for a box to hide everything in.

You wouldn't be here having realised that you'd missed your chance; and that what you had now, was all the world was going to give you.

And that all your hopes for some semblance of normalcy rested on a tough as nails ex-marine, who had kept secrets in the past but had been the only family that you'd known for the past eight years.

It was all you needed….wasn't it? Just one person to at least ask if you were okay.

You couldn't walk away from all that. You couldn't just stop caring because it was _safer_.

_Could you?_

**The End**

_I know I left it on a semi cliff hanger but we have to leave something to the imagination. Don't we? Thanks to everyone who reads and please review as always as I do love hearing from you all. _


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